People who view pornography are doing something that many of them consider unhealthy, and some of them cannot stop. A majority of the population thinks that porn is immoral. That includes many porn users. Porn is now being recognized in many places as a public health hazard. It damages users, their partners, and the sex performers who participate in it. The aim of this dictionary and commentary is to help anyone who wants to rethink porn. This may include people in all three of the aforementioned categories. If even a few readers come to fresh insights or understandings or begin to use new terminology or an old term in a novel way, the dictionary will have served its purpose. It is also important to note at the outset that the underlying values of this dictionary and commentary are health and happiness. I believe that these values are shared by almost everyone, even when they have lost sight of them momentarily.

The list of terms included below is not exhaustive; that would be a much larger undertaking. Instead, it is focused on some essential terms that porn users, their romantic partners, online sex actors, and therapists should know and on ideas that From AAA to XXX: A Dictionary/Commentary on Porn and Porn Addiction that may lead to thinking about porn in a new way. It may also be useful to researchers since it contains hypotheses about what might be examined in future studies. An underlined, bolded term within the text indicates a term (or a derivative of a term) that is defined and discussed elsewhere in the document. It will only be bolded and underlined the first time it appears in the discussion of a particular term to enhance readability (but it will be bolded and underlined again when it first appears in discussions of other terms). Additional terms are bolded for emphasis but are not in the list of defined terms and hence are not underlined. Some of the terms are new and have been coined for this document or are terms not often associated with porn or porn addiction. In those cases, the reader will be led to an entry by hyperlinks (electronic version only) found in other parts of the book. The word “porn” is never bolded in this document because it is never defined (there is no agreed-upon definition). The term O-Mi is only bolded and underlined in this introduction. Familiarity with its meaning is assumed in the rest of the document.

The terms, except for the first (O-Mi, on p. 1) and the last (solutions in the conclusion), will be in alphabetical order (AAA to XXX). O-Mi is a new term introduced as an alternative to “porn.” It is an acronym. The letters that make up the acronym represent two activities that are part of online sex viewing—and, of course, sex magazine and film viewing that are not online. By citing these two activities (ogling and masturbation) in the term itself, there is more clarity than in the word “porn.” Note, however, that the term “porn,” though not defined in this document, will be used frequently because it is familiar to readers and because it is used by many of the cited sources. For these reasons, using it will enhance the readability of the book, but it is hoped that readers will see the utility of the acronym O-Mi for future use in discussions of sexual images. Thus, “O-Mi” will often be used here with the word “porn” but will sometimes be used alone.

Also, note that in many, but not all, instances no differentiation will be made between a porn user and a porn addict. Obviously, not all users are addicts; some users do not have the level of compulsion and the sense of losing control while viewing O-Mi images that addicts have. But negative effects on the brain occur without addiction (Love et al., 2015; Watching Pornography Rewires the Brain, 2019; Wilson, 2017, p. 107), and it is hard to pinpoint when porn use becomes an addiction. The outcomes for the O-Mi viewer are often more of a matter of degree than of type (except for the minority of child porn viewers who are pursued by law enforcement). Hence, no attempt is made here to draw a hard and fast line between porn use and addiction.

So, let’s look at AAA to XXX and a lot in between. I’ll examine our current porn conundrum and explore new and old ways of thinking about porn. Since many of the entries and commentary examine reasons why porn use is problematic, the conclusion will lay out some remedies to the tsunami of porn use